ABSTRACT
In an attempt to break the stalemate caused by the government’s failure to implement the San Andrés Accord, Zapatistas and their supporters organized a series of events in July 1996 culminating in the International Encounter against Neoliberalism and for Humanity. Civil Society leaders organized the Forum for the Reform of the State that brought together workers, campesinos, and intellectuals, along with leaders of the PRD, PAN, and the PRI, to consider how to unite the democratic movement of campesinos and indigenous agriculturalists. This was to precede and provide the substantive basis for discussions in the following Intercontinental Encounter against Neoliberalism and for Humanity in the rain forest. International intellectuals Eduardo Galeano and Alain Touraine met with Mexican intellectuals Pablo González Casanova and Carlos Monsiváis to discuss the course of events in Mexico City and then again in Chiapas at the beginning of July 1996. They were later joined by Danielle Mitterrand, the wife of the former French president, and James Petras, a Binghamton professor of sociology, who journeyed to La Realidad in the rain forest for the intercontinental event later in the month.
